It's okay now. They found there way to the Legion Hovel and skulked out of town with their tails between their legs, muttering things like "I newer thought anything could be so vicious!" and "Good God, the smell!"

I awakened from a nap this afternoon with one abiding thought in my mind. Because it is so deep, so very philosophical, so penetrating, I will share is here. It is in the form of a question, and here it is:

Wonderful palindrome, Rapparee! This one, though, is 4+0+4+0+5, which equals 13, which happens to be the same number as the date today: (13). And I just came home from a soggy but successful open house for our bookmobile in which 40+40+5 people came (85) and ate 404+05 cookies (409), adding a collective 40405 calories to the total intake of people in Pocatello. So there.

Well, all that stuff ain't defeated ME none! I still got the mental agility and complexity and stuff that I had back then and maybe more so. And I told the doctor so just the other day. So there, Mr. Smarty-Bigwords!

It obviously made you mentally agile, if haphazard. Being hit on the head is a subjective exposure to the endemic overlay of irrationality superimposed on complexity, a wicked combination sure to defeat the sturdiest of souls.

Because they're so big and heavy, Amos. I've seen some that had to be carried on a truck. They're like anvils. In fact, some of them have little anvils attached. Personally, I like anvils. I used to know a girl named Ann Vills. She wore her hair in pigtails and had freckles and could run faster than her brothers. Then one day the family moved away and I've never seen her again. Which was okay, because every time she saw me she'd beat me up and laugh at me. I was told that was just her way of showing she liked me, but I dunno -- being hit on the head with a piece of galvanized pipe just doesn't do much for me.

That's a bench vise, Still. GOtta have one if it is to be a real workbench. Use mine alla time. Vice-grips are like locking pliers with various-shaped noses; a good set of them will serve you in all kinds of tricky situations, like screwing or unscrewing a screw whose slot has been stripped, for example.

Ah, ladies...I think (since you are both still in the US, I assume) you probably want to use the American spelling, "vise" and not the British "vice."

The latter would, in this country assume that Stilly has vice on her workbench and Eiseley has a good grip in the same thing. There would be, for example, a bit of a difference between a "Vice Squad" and a "Vise Squad." Granted, the latter may be used to put the squeeze on the former, but only in days past or in Chicago.